Many companies must deal with some portion of their incoming mail that is ambiguously or incorrectly addressed. Currently, it takes a significant amount of knowledgeable manpower to determine who is the individual who is the intended recipient for each piece of incorrectly addressed mail. There are several problems with the current method because it takes a significant amount of time to route the incorrectly addressed mail and if an amount of manpower is limited or not available; more time may be expended by teaching replacement personnel. Although the replacement personnel eventually learn how to recognize many mail pieces, they must endure a long process to determine the recipients for other mail pieces on a recurring basis. Even for the mail pieces that are easily identified, significant time is used to write an internal address for each mail piece. In some cases, this incorrectly addressed mail may be return mail or business reply mail that was generated by an internal department using an ambiguous return address.
Since mail of this kind is considered “deliverable” by United States Postal Service (“USPS”) standards, the mail originator is unaware that the mail is being delayed before delivery or in some cases discarded if employees have left the recipient company. In addition, since the USPS National Change of Address (“NCOA”) database does not include any information about individuals within companies, the originator has no easy way to correct the address or even identify if the recipient still works at the address. Since there is no easy way for a receiving mailroom to inform the mail originator of the correct address, the problem perpetuates and the internal address may have to be re-researched every time a new mail piece arrives from the same mail originator.